Exit by the Abbey

Finishing up this week of posts from east Flanders with a bit of history. I, with my fellow Brussels Beer Challenge judges, found myself at Merksplas-Kolonie on a dreary Monday afternoon. Founded in the early 19th century, this was a sort-of workhouse, residential and employment facility for the destitute. Under Belgian law at this time, and indeed up until the early 1990s when the EU put a stop to it, it was possible for vagrants, the homeless, and anyone without a "proper" place in society to be committed to rural colonies like this and put to work. Following its decommissioning (although there is still a working detention facility on-site) this one has been turned into a visitors' centre, restaurant and event venue, with a hotel in development in the stables.

And of course there's a house beer brand: Vagebond. The core beer is a tripel called Vageblond but we didn't get to try the base one, starting instead on Vageblond Jenever, a version that's been aged in a barrel previously used for the local gin. Maybe it's for the best that we didn't taste the ordinary tripel, as it seems from this that it's very plain, lacking the spice and honey topnotes of good examples. With the barrel, however, you do get a solid dose of boozy herbs, though it's clean tasting as well, and not at all gimmicky.

A somewhat less ambitious twist comes with Vageblond Tripel Primeur. Like the original, this is 8% ABV, the alcohol unaffected by the addition of extra Target hops. I wouldn't have put that down as an especially fruity variety, but there's a huge amount of fruit on display here, all peaches and lychee, set on a smooth and creamy body. It's very dessertish -- perhaps a little too sweet to drink easily, but very pleasant to sip with cheese, I imagine.

And there's a quadrupel as well, the beast that is Vagebruin, at 10.5% ABV. It's a lovely mahogany colour, the flavour starting on a dry cereal grain with more than a hint of roast. I didn't get much by way of fruity Belgian esters, so no plum or raisin, only a mild dark-chocolate bitterness. Though the strength is very apparent from its density and a certain amount of boozy heat, the flavour otherwise doesn't show much complexity. Fine but plain is the verdict. One would expect more from a quadrupel.

Earlier that day, the lunchtime beer had been Affligem's Postel Dubbel. It's a very retro-looking label, but not one I recall seeing before. It's 7% ABV and here we have the features which were sorely missed in the quadrupel. There's chocolate and toasted grains as well, but also lots of delicious dark fruit: black cherry, prune and raisin, finishing on an exotic tang of tamarind. It's not wildly different from other Belgian breweries' quality dubbels, but does show that it's still possible to impress with one of these.

The other grand institution we visited was Corsendonk Abbey. Corsendonk is now a large hospitality company with several hotels in the area, including this one. Despite it also being a ubiquitous beer brand, there's no history of brewing on the site, and the beer all comes from faraway Wallonia.

Corsendonk Blond is a perfectly palatable Belgian blonde ale, almost as easy to drink as a lager, especially when cold on draught. But there's a lovely lacing of honey to add body and give the flavour at least some modicum of character. While far from exciting, it's clean and accessible, while also unmistakably Belgian.

The brewery had featured at the opening reception, where they were pouring another blonde ale, called Tempelier. At 7.5% ABV, it's stronger than most of these are, heading for the weight of a tripel. And you can really taste the difference here, with a heat you don't get from 6% ABV blondes, or even squeaky-clean Duvel. The flavour is largely bready -- wholesome, but a bit boring -- with some added sweet relish or marmalade shred. It's unexciting but perfectly acceptable for the specs.

There's also Corsendonk Blanche, their witbier. The trick with reviewing these is to find the point of difference with the style's archetypes, and then decide if they're an improvement or not. This is a definite not as the recipe's peculiarity appears to be ramping up the coriander to beyond acceptable levels. The result is intensely herbal, like a medicine cabinet, with a background soapy unpleasantness. It's the sort of thing one's palate probably gets used to when drinking more than a sample, but I didn't deem it worth the effort.

Back at Corsendonk Abbey, they were serving lunch. With that came a 75cl bottle of what appears to be a new limited series. Grand Hops: Mistral d'Alsace was the name, and presumably Mistral is the single hop. It's an IPA and is 6.9% ABV. For all that, it's light-bodied and a little unBelgian. The flavour is remarkably complex for a single-hopper, loading in summer flowers to begin, then a punchy lemon zest before finishing on raspberry and cherry. It's lots of fun and very interesting to explore. It's always good to see a venerable old brewery trying something like this, and even better when it results in something delicious.

Today's top Belgian travel tip is that if you have a few hours before you need to be at the airport, try Mechelen. It's a typically picturesque Flemish city and only a short hop to the airport by train. I had an hour spare which was just enough to get to the main square, drink a beer and come back for the train.

I drank it in a poky pub hard by the cathedral called De Floeren Aap: Deep Terra double IPA, a surprise appearance from New York's Drowned Lands brewery, in a venue with an otherwise unremarkable beer offer. It's completely opaque, 8.2% ABV, and has a pungent, bitter, garlic aroma. I expected savoury soup but it does an abrupt and welcome about-face on tasting, showing lots of smooth orange juice and a bite of peach skin. It's heavy, but still has plenty of sparkle, so while it feels as strong as it is, it remains drinkable, if a tiny bit hot.

Our quest ends here. A huge thanks to the Brussels Beer Challenge team for inviting me over and for the fascinating social programme. Let's do it again some time.

Some light pubbing

A random assortment of beers and bars from my recent Belgian trip in today's post, beginning with an icon. Fresh off the plane I stopped in the splendid Halles de Saint-Géry market hall for a bite to eat. The bar had a few options from Heineken's Belgian arm but I went straight for the flagship, Maes Pils. The best thing about it was the ribbeke glass: no pissing about with chalices here. It tastes sweetly of maize first, finishing on a drier husk. The carbonation is far too high making for prickly and uncomfortable drinking. I got a slight smoky staleness as well. Not an experiment I need to repeat.

There was another golden beer in the fridges at the meeting venue the following day: 100 PAP by 3 Fontaines, a brewery which I can't believe hasn't been forced to change its name by a certain lambic producer. This one was produced as a fundraiser by a migrants' charity and I understand has changed styles since its inception. It's now a blonde ale, or possibly even a pale ale, at 6% ABV. There's a lovely tropical aroma showing mango and pineapple. The flavour is clean and dry, quite lagerlike, with a little crisp caraway seed and some sweeter peach. Simple and decent fare, overall.

You want some wow factor? How about Jester Zinne, the collaborative sour saison from De La Senne and Jester King? How about Jester Zinne for €15 a bottle in Le Coq instead of the €32 that Moeder Lambic was asking for it? It's a modest 5.9% ABV and begins fruitily with fresh and juicy apricot, laced with oily coconut and followed with enough of a bricky gueze kick to make it taste more like a lambic than a saison. It's beautiful stuff, balancing the fruit and aged sourness perfectly, kind of like a junior edition of Cantillon's Fou'foune.

Friday lunch, as is becoming routine for these meetings, was spaghetti at Monk. They've just launched their very own house beer, Strandhut, brewed by the bar staff in collaboration with Stadsbrouwerij 't Koelschip in Ostend. It arrived to the table in a large bottle, a muddy pale amber colour and failing to form a head on pouring. I asked one of its co-creators what style they were going for and got a Klompian shrug in response. I'll call it a Belgian blonde ale so. Even more worrying, asking about the ABV elicited the same annoyed grumbling. "About 6%" he said, adding they didn't really record it accurately. It's quite a thin beer, but pleasantly bitter and spicy, with the level of herbs and lemon rind you might find in a witbier or even a tripel. As a food accompaniment it could definitely have benefitted from a heftier body; as a cheapish house beer: yeah, sure, why not?

Compare and contrast with the beer for dinner that evening, in the cosy embrace of first-rate beer restaurant Nüetnigenough. M'colleague Dr John had picked De Ranke's Guldenberg from the menu for us, a proper tripel of 8% ABV. This is an especially dry version of the style, lacking the honey and candy they often show, and replacing them with grain husk and white pepper. There's a certain apple and grape quality in the middle but it reverts to type in the end, turning acidic. It's a bit of a workout to drink, but I enjoyed the challenge and would come back for more.

The big discovery of the trip was Gist, a recently-opened beer bar not far from Grand Place and Centraal station. We visited a couple of times, enjoying the excellent beer selection and the laid-back vibe which will hopefully continue as it becomes more famous, but probably won't. Funnily enough, at the last EBCU meeting in Milan, I encountered Stradaregina's Sourflowers 02. And here in Brussels for the next one I found Sourflowers 01, the elderflower one. I didn't get much elder from it but there was a gorgeous brett-apricot aroma, and a flavour mixing peaches and gunpowder on a puckering tart base. It's not far off the level of excellence found in Jester Zinne and I'm glad it seems to be a longterm beer that travels. Grab it if you see it.

Gist had two cask engines on the go, but sadly neither was pouring lambic. I had a glass of Psycho, the table beer from local producer No Science. It's a pale yellow colour and at once spicy and flowery, beginning on honeysuckle and incense and ending with a hard kick of citrus and wax. At 4% ABV they've pushed through the limit of what constitutes a table beer, I reckon, though it does deliver that simple yet complex mix of farmyard flavours that the style is all about.

For his part, John went with Excuse Me While I Kiss My Stout (2018 edition) by Hedonis Ambachtsbier, a Belgian client brewer with which I'm not familiar. It was an 8.2% ABV imperial job with added mint, maple and hazelnut. For all that it wasn't overly sweet, balancing the syrup with bitterness and real coffee, and never getting too thick or hot. It's a balanced sort of pastry stout.

I finished that evening on a Canadian beer, Dunham's Berliner Passion Weisse. The aroma of this is pure sugary passionfruit but the flavour is bizarrely sharp, almost vinegary. It doesn't go all the way there, thankfully, keeping plenty of fruit around to offset the acidity. There's not much going on between its two facets, but what's there is enjoyable.

The inevitable few rounds in Moeder Lambic Fontainas began on yet another new house beer, Moeder Every Day by Jandrain-Jandrenouille. Like the earlier table beer, this is 4% ABV and a pale blonde, showing just a slight haze. Lemon zest emerges first, backed by crisp lagery grains. A tiny bitter yeast kick adds Belgian complexity, but that's as advanced as it gets. It's a beer that's not designed to be pored over or thought about, and I guess even Moeder Lambic has to have one of those on the list.

100 років УНР ("100 Years of the Ukranian National Republic") from Pravda in Lviv had a whiff of more than just nationalism about it. This is a strong stout of 8.5% ABV, densely black in colour with a tan head and smelling harshly of old cigarette smoke. The flavour was surprisingly sweeter, the ash turning to more avuncular pipe tobacco, plus a solid base of chocolate and treacle bread. This is strong yet subtle, and surprisingly easy to drink.

John, meanwhile, opted for Heavy Porter, another No Science offering. It's fairly classic in the way it's constructed, beginning on chocolate, adding in some meadowy floral hops, and finishing quickly and cleanly. This too is dangerously easy drinking, at a not inconsiderable 6% ABV.

I just had a quick sip of someone else's √225 (not pictured), a saison from Swiss brewery BFM. A sip was enough to know it's absolutely terrible, with a harshly concentrated vinegar acidity that's simply painful to drink, or even to smell. Moving on swiftly...

... to the much more friendly-sounding Imperial Hoppy Berliner Weisse from Mont Salève. It's oranges all the way here, from the colour through to the sweet orangeade flavour, complete with a pithy bitterness, leading to a tang of aspirin. The sour side is very mild, and the overall picture is refreshing and fun, more like a tart pale ale than a Berliner weisse. I was shocked to discover it's a full-on 9% ABV, so at least the "imperial" bit holds up.

My companion's finisher was Adelardus by Kerkom, one he knew but I didn't. It's a straight up dubbel at 7% ABV, a dark wine-red colour with a vinous aroma to match. The flavour is much more typical, indeed spot on: cereal and caramel form the foundation, overlaid with bass notes of plum and raisin, then ripe red cherries on the treble. It's rich, smooth and remarkably warming at the relatively low strength.

I'll come back to our other Brussels venue -- another brewery -- in tomorrow's post, but after finishing up here it was off to Leuven. A quickie Saturday night pub crawl began with exemplary glasses of Stella (don't laugh) in the raucous but wonderful Café In Den Ouden Tijd opposite the station, and finished on disappointment at De Blaue Kater, which has moved from its dark and cosy alleyway to a new location across town where it has evolved into a grand multistorey pub and venue. In between there was M-Café.

This modern bar at the front of the city museum was very quiet when we rocked in. It wasn't want of fancy beer that was keeping the punters away: my first was from Warpigs, their Snack Family pale ale. It's a murky orange colour and smelled fabulous, all zesty and spicy. That proved deceptive, as the flavour was disappointing: some mild jaffa, a touch of caraway, but that was it. I got through my glass OK, and enjoyed the part right before each sip. I was left unthrilled, however.

Something even more bro-ish for John: Spacelord, a coffee imperial stout by a Belgian brewer delighting in the name Malterfakker. It was another poor effort, heavy and sticky, lacking the fresh coffee flavour it needed to brighten it, doubling down on syrup and putty. Far too much hard work at this time of night.

I'll get to the beer festival we went to in Leuven later in the week, once I finish with Brussels in tomorrow's post.

Bankers' draught

I was only in Luxembourg for a couple of hours, so what follows, I'm sure, is not representative of Luxemburgish beer, any more than Jupiler, Maes and Stella are representative of Belgium's.

Bofferding is the dominant lager brand, its green and white livery appearing on countless pub signs around the city. The product itself is a smooth and malty golden lager with, I presume, German roots. Bofferding also make Hausbier, a sweet and malty amber lager with a bit of a sour bite.

For something drier, try Battin Gambrinus, a rather bitter pale yellow lager. Good as an aperitif. Turning up the malt quotient, there's Diekirche lager, only 4.8% but packed with taste. And finally there's Mousel: dry, easy-drinking and pretty much as nondescript as it's possible for a lager to be.

Luxembourg is not one of Europe's great beer destinations.